


Addict

by SlytherinSweetheart1



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Addiction, Alien bond, Cliche, F/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-28 01:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 12,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16231217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinSweetheart1/pseuds/SlytherinSweetheart1
Summary: Sam Carter is addicted to her CO. Literately.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SophieHatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieHatter/gifts).



“Well, this is awkward” she says, her body rigid and still, lying on her side with her head resting on her arm. Behind her, the Colonel lies still, unmoving.

“Could be worse.” Jack murmurs, each breath shifting the small hairs at the back of her neck. He is also on his side, facing her, one hand on her hip - the only point of contact between them.

The room is dark, and the hospital cot they are on was not made for two people. “How could this be worse?” Sam growls, then sighs, then shifts out of sheer discomfort and embarrassment.

“Well, you could be here with Hammond. Hell, I could be here with Hammond.” That last comment makes her grin, the first of her earnest beaming smiles since this whole mess started.

“I’d like to see that.” She says continuing to fidget, the nervous energy rolling off her in waves. Jack’s hand on her hip presses down, grounds her.

“Hold still, Carter!” He orders, but there is no bite to his words. This ridiculous series of events has cumulated with the two of them being ordered to share a bed to “refuel”.

The observation deck is finally empty, the infirmary roar dulled to the quiet buzzing of Janet’s machines at 3am.

Sam stills, but it feels like each muscle is ready to snap, like a growing burning itch running beneath her skin, the only part of her comfortable is the one directly under his palm.

“I need to move, Sir.” She spits out, anger warring with confusion and restlessness.

“If you get up, you are going to pass out again.” Jack soothes, his voice low and inviting. The fingers at her hip rubbing small winding circles against her hospital gown.

She’s half naked, exhausted, and addicted to her CO.

“If I could have another look at that device..” she begins “Ack! No! You nearly died.” Jack interrupts, the hand at her hip pulling her closer against him.

Sam shifts, folding into him the until the back of her knees are tucked up against. The feel of the fabric of his BDUs against her bare legs feels illicit. The itch dissolves. Everywhere he touches her, pleasure replaces the ache, until she finds herself leaning into him like a cat.

“Just rest, Major. We can get all of this sorted out in the morning.” Sam is surprised by his acquiescence and his calm. Unless he is going in for the kill, his movements are usually energetic.

“I’m in withdrawal! Over you!” She seethes, but the calm that flows from him washes over her. Lulls her. Her eyes close. Just a second more and she will move.

Jack holds her, arms wonderfully tight. The infirmary fades away,all she can smell is his scent, all she can feel is the heat of his body.

 


	2. Two

“So, we know now that the Colonel secretes a hormone..” Janet begins, holding up a whiteboard marker in her hand and tapping it against the glass, as if she was poised to somehow draw such a thing.

“Ack! Could we use a different word. Something less... less.. discharge-y .” Jack finds himself interrupting, glancing at Sam to see if she was smiling.

She wasn’t. Sam had not smiled in days. She sat in the chair next to his, slumped in her seat, her face white and withdrawn. Jack had seen Sam after hangovers and torture, after Jolinar, but she had never looked quite like this. 

“What Janet is saying is that Sam is addicted. Teal’c and I had poured over every text we could find, there is nothing. We don’t know how to reverse it.” Daniel says, his eyes bright with worry.

Sam’s shoulders twitch, as if she’s about to start silently sobbing. Jack feels as if his heart is breaking, her pain coursing through him.

“But we’ll keep trying!” Janet interjects, her voice falsely brave.

Jack finds himself reaching for Sam, unthinking, his fingers brushing lightly over the tops of her hands. For the first time since she walked into the conference room, Sam’s head comes up, her usually bright eyes seemingly staring through him. As his fingers thread through hers, she takes a loud staggered breath, and then, slowly exhales in relief. 

“Major, I cannot order you to hold hands with your CO, but you can’t leave the infirmary again if you’re refusing treatment.” Hammond seems to be hedging his words, not unaware of the undercurrents in the room.

“Sir. I can’t make the Colonel sit with me for hours on end...” Sam beings, but is interrupted by an awkward cough from Daniel. When they look at him, he starts busying himself with his notes, suspiciously nervous for Daniel.

In the end, the suggestion comes from Teal’c “MajorCarter, you and O’Neill need to cohabitate in the evenings.”

Jack notices that everyone but Teal’c is now mimicking Daniel, averting gazes. 

“Sir! You also can’t order the Colonel to sleep with me!” Sam says, to her own mortification, unable to stop the words before they bring the room to silence.

“Don’t you see Sam, this is the most you’ve been awake in days!” Daniel fires back.

“Major, you and the Colonel are both on stand down until this matter is resolved. This is a medical necessity. You are dismissed.” He sounds sad, like a disappointed father whose children are being muleheaded.

Sam makes faces at his retreating back. Her hand in Jack’s, their legs touching from thigh to calf, she notices her headache slowly fading.

“Perhaps, you would feel better if you developed a Jack-o-meter. So you know how much you need.” Jack suggests. The absurdity of his comment makes her laugh, then sigh. The laugh again.

“Are you able to eat?” That’s Janet.

“Cake.” Sam says, “I could go cake.”


	3. Three

“Take three more steps, Jack.” Daniel says, writing furiously into his notebook. Jack obliges with a sigh.

“Daniel, we have been at this for hours. Ya think we could speed it up?” The tone of warning in Jack’s voice is enough to make Daniel look up, ready to begin the argument for precision over speed again.

Over the radio, Janet’s voice crackles. “Stop.”

Everyone freezes.

“That’s it, Colonel. We’ve hit the hard limit.” Over the noise, Jack can hear the machines beeping. Jack quickly takes three steps forward. He wants to run in the direction of the base where Sam is hooked up to Janet’s machines, to wrap her in his arms and soothe the headache and nausea he knows she is feeling.

“So, if I just add the distance here” Daniel mutters only to be faced by Jack’s incredulous look. “Just under 4 klicks, Daniel”.

“Ah. That’s not..” he begins, worry for his friends filling his voice.

“That’s not much.” Jack finishes for him.He gathers the last of Daniel’s measuring instruments and begins walking towards the base. Every step he takes, the itch that tells him Sam is unwell, eases slightly. He won’t feel whole until he gets his hand on her bare naked skin. Any skin will do. Last week he spent two hours holding onto her ankle while she fiddled with some reactor. He played cards, she broke the laws of physics. It was enough to top her up and he could sleep while she continued to tinker.

The talk about sleeping together had made them both uncomfortable. He suspected she wouldn’t have spoken to him for days if it wouldn’t have literately made her go into withdrawal. So instead, they orbited around each other, ineffectual and unproductive. Both living on base, both sleeping fitfully, touching to recharge when the nausea or the itch got too much.

Out of the two of them, the Air Force was only getting one fully operating officer.

“Jack-“ Daniel began tentatively “-Is this an opportunity for the two of you, maybe?”

“Can it, Daniel!”

“I’m just saying, I know how you feel about her.”

“Daniel!”

“If you’re not going to listen to me, listen to her!”

“I am listening to her! She’s independent and proud and fierce. This isn’t Carter.” Daniel knows it’s true. It would feel like taking advantage of her, to take advantage of the situation.

The walk back takes 20 minutes too long, the check points and security irritating, the elevator too slow, the corridors to the infirmary too crowded, and then, then, blissfully he is dragging her into his arms.

The machines silence and normalize. Her heart beat, blood sugar level, Adrenalin, serotonin levels, marker upon marker settling down.

“Sir.” Sam sighs into his chest.

“I’m sorry, Carter.”

“It could be worse, Sir. You could be here with Maybourne.”

Jack laughed into her hair.


	4. Four

“Sir, I’m tired, can we go to bed.”

The sight that greets Jack is one rumpled miserable looking Major. She hadn’t recharged in 30 hours, hadn’t slept in quite that long either. The loss of off-base living to make her follow normal circadian rhythms had allowed Sam to throw herself into work.

Jack knows he wasn’t behaving much better. In fact, Sam had found him in his office, where he was catching up on mission reports just to avoid going to bed to wait for her.

Sleeping together had become a practical necessity. They both knew it, they just hadn’t managed it yet. They got as far as sitting in Jack’s on-base rooms, holding hands, watching TV. Sam had eventually fallen asleep, sliding down the bed andcurling into him.

But this? This was planned. They would dress for bed. They would brush their teeth.

Jack knows he‘s the lucky one. He got the itch when she wasn’t around, Sam got the pain. The nausea. The loss of consciousness.

He finds himself holding her hand as they walk towards the private quarters. Just like that, openly, in the corridor. He can see that the pain of withdrawal turn into sheer exhaustion. If he holds onto her long enough she will recover, and sleep.

“I think you can go about 12 hours cold turkey.” Jack says. Sam has her hands wrapped around his, holding onto his arm like a drunken prom date.

“Sounds about right.” The more tired she is, the more sparse her Sirs.

“Maybe we could make this a regular thing?” Jack suggests gently. “You know, every twelve hours rather than every thirty before you start having blackouts.”

“Daniel told you.” Sam accuses.

“I can feel it, Carter.”

They pass a few of the Marines heading to their bunks. Everyone nods and “Colonel” “Major” “marine”-s each other. No one cares about the cuddling. It’s been five weeks since the bonding Incident and the rumor mill had had its fill. Not even the admin staff were interested.

“We’re old news, Sir.” Sam says.

“I could glare at some of them for you.” He offered “-but it would ruin my sunny reputation.”

“I’m not used to it.” She whispers, studiously staring straight ahead.

“Being an addict? I can see that.”

“Needing someone.” And then bravely, she adds “you’ve been married before.”

Jack wants to desperately ask if she’s saying they’re as good as married, wants to squash the small feeling of hope blooming in his chest, wants to give her the support she needs. He needs to make a joke, to keep it light, to hide.

“Ah. It gets easier. Sharing things.” In the end, he goes for truth. Sam’s fingers are warm on his naked bicep. The door to his private quarters looms up ahead. It feels intimate and illicit. Wrong. It feels right, too. 

“You sleep on the left.” He says and grins.


	5. Five

She wakes up to the rush of pleasure and the realization that she’s grinding against the Colonel’s hip. They’re in bed, shes got a leg over his thigh and arm while he lies on his back. His other hand is holding her close in that very male and posessive way he sleeps. Her hands, however, are underneath his soft shirt, the one he had taken to wearing at night now that they were sharing a bed.

Platonically.

Her movements are slow and minuscule, unnoticeable, but the pleasure is unpredicted as she continues to rock against his hand. She suspects that it is the bond, feeding into their usual attraction. It feels ridiculously good, and it burns through her. One minute, two, and she feels the telltale signs of an oncoming orgasm. She knows she needs to stop, she can’t take advantage of him in this way, this isn’t normal and it isn’t right.

‘Addict’ she thinks, hating herself for it, forcing her hips to still, removing her hands and wrapping them tightly around herself.

 

It’s the clammy heat that wakes Jack up. Within a week he had become accustomed to sleeping next to the heat sink that is Sam. Without what he called her “freezy feet” and “icicle hands” he would overheat under the now required covers.

He finds her sitting in the corner, arms wrapped around her knees.

“Carter. Are you ok?” The sight of her breaks his heart.

“No.” A whisper.

“Come back to bed?”

“No.” Anger.

“Carter, did I.. Did I do something in my sleep? I have memories of..touching.”

Silence.

“Carter - “ he begins, running his hand through his bed hair, scratching at the back of his neck, hating himself “-did I touch you inappropriately?”

A sob.

“Oh god. Carter. Sam. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Jack moves to go to her, stops himself, realises she probably would not want him to touch her. If she refuses to talk to him, to see him, to touch him, she would die. There is no worse coercion. There is no worse crime.

When she gets up, he’s sure she is about to flee. Instead, she throws herself at him. Her crying is loud and ugly, heaving sobs. Jack tries to sooth her, to apologise, but she cries harder.

“It’s me.” She sobs. “I touched you.”

“Oh. That’s ok, Sam.”

“It isn’t. You were asleep. I took advantage. I tried to stop. I’m such an addict.”

“Sam. Sam. No. It’s ok. It’s a shame you weren’t wearing that little tank top number.” That last comment makes her cry harder.

“Samantha. Sorry. I’m not good with words.” He soothes. His hands stroking across her naked arms, smoothing the tank top straps down her shoulders. “You need to cry. And process. But not over me. You didn’t hurt me. You couldn’t hurt me. I’m ok. I don’t mind. I’m here.” Again and again he whispers, and she cries, finally, after six weeks of addiction and withdrawal. Six weeks of shame.

“I’m forever assaulting you, Sir.”

“Well, legally speaking, for it to be assault, you’d need to do it in the absence of consent. I consent, Sam. Asleep, drugged, whatever, I consent.”

He doesn’t get it, she realises. He doesn’t get that she was a monster now. That she wasn’t human, if she had even been human before. No, not since Jolinar.

Jack manages to get Sam back into bed, back under the covers where he can soothe her dreams.

“Tomorrow, I am going to look at that machine again. Sir.” She says. There is no argument from him. Jack wants her to want him, but not like this.


	6. Six

Sam Carter was addicted to her CO. Literally. But after two weeks of sleeping in his bed and tinkering with the Bond Machine for hours on end, she was able to distinguish some things. She had a report she was writing, getting it down in a respectable scientific style, with footnotes, just to be sure that she was not approaching this incorrectly.

Half a rotation of the planet, according to Daniel was required to recharge.

Pi, in kilometres, was the distance they could be separated before it would hurt, according to her precise calculations.

No other person could be bound, although the Colonel had volunteered they test it on Maybourne to be sure. They knew no one else could be bound because the machine had spent extensive time with the local inhabitants of PX3-475 and with the other scientists, and emitted the same type of radiation. It only acted on people with naquadah in their blood.

The only question then was, why the Colonel? Was Jack somehow special, or was something else at play. Daniel had now spent days with the indigenous population of where the device was found trying to decipher their lost texts.

“Sam?” That was Daniel, just back from the infirmary, by the way excitement had coloured his voice; he had not gotten his words out yet.

“Just a second, Daniel!” she called out, sliding from underneath the Bond Machine, and looking up at her friend. It was strange to see him going off-world without her to protect him. Sam hated that she and the Colonel were both banned from off-world travel for the foreseeable future. She suspected that the Colonel was stressing about the state of his team, moving about them like a mother hen.

“How did you go, Daniel?” She asked, trying for a smile. Daniel almost bounced on his feet “It’s a teaching device!”.

Yes, everything with Daniel was a teaching opportunity.

“What’s a teaching device?” That was the Colonel, walking into the room to crowd Sam into the furniture, as he had become fond of doing.

“It’s not a Bond Machine. It’s a teaching device!”

“What’s a teaching device?” That was Janet.

“Oh for the love of..” Sam muttered under her breath. This was becoming ridiculous.

“What we thought of as a Bond Machine, it doesn’t create a Bond. Everyone who is like Sam is put in a situation to teach and test them. The natives had never heard of it working quite this extremely. Don’t you see, this is wonderful?”

“Oh is it now? At what point, Daniel, when Carter is passing out or when she is dying? When is it wonderful?” His anger fills the room, but to Daniel’s credit, he doesn’t flinch.

“She can learn, Jack!”

“This is Carter, Daniel. She’s smarter than anyone. If she could have learnt something from this, she would have done so already!”

Sam sighs, squares her shoulders. “I’m going home. We can read over Daniel’s report and debrief tomorrow.” Nothing is going to stand in the way of the first time she will be able to go home in months.

Sure, she had to take the Colonel with her, and fold him into the mess of her new life, but at least they were allowed off-base.

“At least, does the recharge indicator work?” Janet asked. The bits of metal on Sam’s desk glowed. They were made of naquadah, one blue, one green.

“I think so. I was able to establish that the metal reacted to the charge quite early on, it was just a matter of fine tuning it to let me see the levels and be able to interpret them.”

“You really created a Jack-o-meter?” Daniel asked, his voice thick with amazement.

“It’s Carter.” The Colonel said as if that shouse be explanation enough. Perhaps, to him, it was. 


	7. Seven

There was no more emotional breakdowns and no more touching incidents. She staid quiet and contained, taking the medication that Janet offered. It dulled her senses, made her feel stupid and tired all the time, but she didn’t find herself humping her CO either.

Waking up next to Jack was a lot more emotionally fraught and intimate than sleeping next to him. There was something domestic and intimate about their alarm/coffee/stretching routine. About reaching over him to get the telephone to be answer the inevitable emergency midnight calls. Within days of their off-base life they had settled into the routine of staying at Jack’s rather than at hers, more space and the quality of light, he had argued, but Sam suspected she had acquiesced because everything smelled like him. Within days of that, she had started to call him Jack.

“When are we going home, Carter?” That was him, and every time he said the word home Sam’s stomach clenched. Joy and misery warring for attention.

“I’ll be done soon. Have you spoken to the plumber?”

“Yes, I called him and told him you thought his work was dismal and that he should pay you to fix all his mistakes.”

“Jack!”

“He said he would deliver the parts I ordered months ago and shave off the cost of labour as we were installing everything ourselves.”

“Good. Here, can you hold this, I only need one more box of files and we can go.”

“Carter! Can we stop piling the house up with work? Can’t you go buy shoes like...”

“Like a normal girl?” Sam interrupted, immediately angry and hurt. He wasn’t the first person to accuse of being too work focused. If this was a real relationship, Sam thought, this would be the end of it. She turned to face him, and the look of chagrin on his face was almost enough to disarm her.

“Like Daniel, actually.”

“He didn’t?”

“Eighteen boxes. I counted. I suspected he was hiding books in there, but it was actually all shoes.”

Her laugh echoed throughout the corridor as they walked. Jack felt the weight of it against his skin, like the brush of a butterfly, but that wasn’t new. He had been seeking her smiles for years.

At the checkout, when she was signing him out, she noticed Jack’s hands loosely holding the boxes she had given him. A ring. He wore a ring.

“What’s.. um.. what’s that?”

“Oh. I kept fiddling with it, and it bent.” He said every shuffle of his feet making it look like the only thing preventing him from hiding his hands behind his back was the boxes he held.

“The Jack-o-meter?” Sam stupidly asked, recognising the metal she had shaped and tampered to indicate to him where the charge was at.

“Yes. It was soft and bendy.”

“Ah.” She realised she was blushing.

“Why Carter, do you want your school ring back?” He drawled. She never knew how he managed to flip these things on her.

“I wear mine on my tags.” She tried, her voice suddenly tight and croaking.

“I tried that, kept taking it out. It fits better as a ring. Needed to make sure you were not trying to starve yourself to death for science.”


	8. Eight

It’s Sunday morning, the sun is still low in the sky and the light in their bedroom is warm and tacky. Almost tangible as it gathers golden in pools amongst the sheets. Sam knows its inevitably their bedroom, because she has a pile of books by the left side of the bed and a dedicated half sized blanket on her half. The year is cooling down but Jack still runs hot.

It’s their bedroom, because Jack calls it so.

The pleasure that curses through her every time he runs his hand lazily down the length of her back is both spiky and slow, lapping at her in waves. Jack is reading a book, some trashy paperback that he must have read a dozen times before, if the covers are any indication. He has reading glasses on, which Sam thinks is incredibly sexy, and is lounging in boxers and an old hockey T-shirt.

His left arm is around her, and she is cradled into his side. Her head on his chest and her arm across his torso. The ring on his right hand, her ring, glows a warm orange, indicating that Sam’s charge is low. Not dangerous, there is no pain, but not enough to last her until bedtime.

She had gotten to bed late, dulled by a day of work and the tablets Janet still has her on, had tossed and turned all night, not having maintained enough contact, and despite a solid eight hours of sharing his bed, she had clearly not had enough of Jack.

This had become common, cuddling in the mornings, his hands tracing circles on every part of skin not covered by her camisole. It often took a full 12 hours to re-charge, and no one could sleep for that long.

Jack shifted as he turned the page, his thumb catching against a particularly ticklish area, and Sam giggled into his chest.

She felt him stiffen, his body alert and responsive in an instant.

“Oh no no no no no no” but it was too late, he was like a shark sensing blood, flinging the book aside to tickle her.

“Jaaaaack, Jaaack, that’s not fair.” She gasped between laughter, squirming in his embrace, until he pinned her on the bed beneath him.

His eyes were warm and smiling, completely unguarded, and she was overwhelmed with the urge to kiss him. He gasped, as if he could read her mind, and she flexed under his hands to get him to move off her.

“Carter.” Puzzlement and wonder ran in his voice.

“Jack?”

He reached for her, and for an instant she thought he was going to touch her chest, but instead, he pulled the necklace that rested there to show her the metal that rested nestled with her tags. Green. As if hours had flown and sped by in minutes.

“That’s. Wow. That’s unusual. Do you think it’s malfunctioning?” She wondered out loud.

“I don’t know, my ring matches.” He said, showing her the ring made of matching metal.

“I wonder what changed?”

“Do I need to tickle you every day, Carter?” He asked. Eyeing her armpits and the sides of her belly in that male predatory way.

“Move, O’Neill.” Sam swats at him. It’s hard to be respectful to the man while they share a bed.

“You mean Mr Carter?” He asks her, laughing.

“Are the neighbours still convinced we are married?”

“Just yours, dear.” The endearment drips with sarcasm.

Sam goes through the tests on her laptop, prodding at the metal around her neck. It proudly shines green. Fully re-charged.

Interesting.


	9. Nine

It’s Janet that figures out that the bond feeds on intimacy. That to be more effective in their recharge process all they have to do is figure out ways in which Sam accepts intimacy.

A hug from Janet. A pat on the back from Hammond. Watching Jack ruffle Daniel’s hair. Sharing a quiet moment with Teal’c. Each of these private intimate things that make SG1 family go to recharge Sam. There is no one Bond, but dozens, it’s just that the thing with Jack, that’s the one she needs to live.

Sam is sick of being a guinea pig in her own experiments. Jack still excretes (“Oi! Call it something else! Honestly you people. I’m not a slug.”- Jack) the hormone that fulfils (“I don’t like that word, Daniel.” - Sam) her, but it becomes obvious over time that there really is a teaching element.

They spend days on the floor of Jack’s living room, eating junk food under the stern gaze of Janet, and making diagrams of things Sam apparently finds to be intimate.

“We know there is an overwhelming focus on heteronormative family structures that Sam prefers. Societal pressures being what they are it is likely that any American woman would find that intimacy presents in the same way. Security, warmth, physical contact, gifts.”

“I need to buy her jewelry?” Jack asks, irreverent and uninterested in Daniel’s lecture. Jack and Sam are lying on the couch, Sam’s feet tucked under Jack’s ass, the fingers of his left hand dancing along the skin of her ankle.

At his comment, Sam glares at him and reaches to steal his drink.

The list of things Sam likes grows bigger and sillier. Jack adds nothing to the list. He doesn’t tell them that Sam likes their private jokes or that he microwaves her towels on really cold mornings. Instead he lets them list blue jello, hugs, a yellow kitchen, driving someone else’s car, shopping for cutlery, haircuts.

No one mentions the obvious. No one dares. Until one evening Daniel does.

“What if you just picked someone up at a bar?”

The room is silent.

Jack gets up and leaves the lounge. Sam stands too, looks at Daniel, her voice filled with a quiet rage. “I can’t just demand he sleep with me because I need to, Daniel.”

Once Sam too has stormed out Daniel looks at Teal’c and Janet.

“For smart people, those two sure are determined to be stupid.”

 

In the kitchen, Jack is absentmindedly loading the new Tupperware Sam bought into the dishwasher. She goes to him, reaches for him, arms wrapping around him, her face pressed between his shoulder blades. She pretends it’s for her, because the absence of him hurts her, but the part of her that refuses to lie to herself hopes he is upset at the idea of her sleeping with another man.

“If I asked you, would you kiss me?” She whispers. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t move. If she didn’t feel the fall and rise of his chest against her hands she would suspect he wasn’t breathing. At his silence she begins to ramble “Not now, at some point, if I needed it, to top up. Instead of death.”

“The kiss of life?” He asks, his hands palm down on the counter, her ring, blue and shiny on his right hand. Evidence of a bond and a comfort they refuse to acknowledge.

“Yes.”

“Sure, Carter. I’ll kiss you.” His voice rests somewhere between amused and flirtatious.

 

 

 

 


	10. Ten

Sam misses the morning cuddling but it becomes exchanged for something much better on weeknights. Instead of spending hours lazing in bed or holding hands in the conference room, instead, just before sleep, Jack stands in front of her, his hands warm and gentle as they cup her face, and then he leans forward and kisses her.

Warm lips part and a gentle flick of his tongue against her mouth, inviting her to follow him. She never does, petrified that she would break the boundaries that exist between them. His kisses burn her, her desire for him feels all consuming. She fists her hands and holds them at his hips, sure that if she let instinct take over she would wrap them around his neck and pull him to her. That she would lose herself in him, never to be found or unraveled until he decided that one addicted and addled woman was not worth losing the Stargate over.

He kisses her, just the once, every night, before they slip into the bed, and pretend everything is normal. Or as normal as things could be for them, considering how messy life had gotten. Alien addiction and the end of the world. Sam runs the science department, her own command, and is considered permanently promoted in the eyes of the airforce.

Jack, as the 2IC of the base, supports Hammond with the off-world teams, allowing for a more Washington focused command. It works.

On Friday night, while Sam sits at the dinner table and types furiously on her laptop, Jack makes dinner.

“Carter? Carter? Sam? Samantha!”

“Oh, sorry, yes, what’s wrong?”

“Hurry.”

She rushes into the kitchen, worry in each step, and finds him standing with a bouquet of wildflowers. Their colours dazzling, with simple green stems, and strong dark leaves.

“Oh. Jack.” A whisper, as she reaches for the flowers.

He picks at the necklace at her neck, the chain tracing the valley between her breasts. She hadn’t broken the habit of wearing a bra when she was around him, perhaps the last step of truly feeling at home, even though she had been living here for months now.

Within seconds, they see the charge go from blue to green.

“Thought so.” He says, grinning. She thinks maybe he is going to kiss her, she’s sure of it, feeling the intent behind his thoughts.

The kitchen timer startles the both of them, making them flinch. Jack drops the necklace, the moment broken, as if cool common sense had flowed back into his veins.

He leans over and kisses her forehead.

“Happy birthday, Sam.”

 


	11. Eleven

“Janet, I need more pills!” Sam calls out, moving through Janet’s small office with something akin to panic.

“What, why? I thought things were settling down?” Janet grabs at her clipboard and Sam thinks that if Jack was there he would make a comment about Janet’s next immediate reaction, to order blood tests.

“They were, but, you know, we wanted to go back to work properly and..”

“And what?”

“And we’e been intimate.”

“You had sex with the Colonel?” Janet cries out in shock. Sam thinks the look on her face would be comical, if she wasn’t frantically checking to make sure none of the nursing staff had heart the outburst.

“No! Nothing like that. Well, a little bit like that. I’ve kissed him. For science.”

“Sure.”

“Janet, you know what I mean.”

“Ok, so what’s the problem then?”

“I’m having dreams. I wake up and I’m so furiously turned on, and I’m sure he knows!”

“And that’s a problem?”

“Janet, how would you feel if, I don’t know, Daniel was in your bed ejaculating every morning.”

Janets eyes go very wide, her breath catches in her throat, and her face pales.

“Janet!”

“You are a normal woman who is around a very sexual situation and you’re aroused. For the love of God, Sam, it would be malpractice to give you medicine to negate a normal bodily function.”

“Don’t try to change the topic. What’s this about Daniel?”

“Where is an unscheduled off world activation when you need one?” Janet asks, then sighs.

 

“I have a secret for you.” Sam says later that night in bed. The kissing was over and one with, she had cornered Jack in the kitchen and tasted him in the long shadows of twilight. Now they rested next to each other, touching from thigh to ankle, Sam reading a new paper on design theory, Jack thumbing through a history novel.

“I knew you secretly fancy Teal’c.”

“No, its about Janet.”

Jack sits up, all smiles.

“You secretly fancy Janet?”

Sam swats at him with her journal. “I’m not going to tell you now.”

Jack traps her legs with his, flipping over to pin her to the bed.

“Out with it, Major.”

“Oh, like that, is it?” His warm brown eyes draw her in, and she wonders if it would be ok to kiss him twice a day. Maybe she could argue that she was planning on going for a run in the morning and could only lie next to him for six hours. Necessary added intimacy. She realises she is leaning up, eyes focused on his mouth, watching him lick his lips in anticipation.

The sound of the phone ringing breaks the moment.

“Oh for crying out loud.”

Jack pushes the phone in her direction, and heads for the dresser.

“Carter.” She answers ”Yes, Sir. Yes. Yes, Sir. No sir. We are on our way, Sir.”

As she hangs up, Jack throws her uniform at her. Sam turns to watch him pull a black T-shirt out of the closed, throwing his sleep shirt on the chair that’s occupies the bedroom for just that very reason.

His naked back is enough to distract her. Powerful shoulders, trim waist, his head disappearing as he pulls the shirt on. “What’s your charge, Carter?”

“Purple. Shit.”

“C’mere” he says and then in a few steps he is kissing her again, mouth open, wet, startling her so that’s she gasps. “That’s it, open your mouth for me, Samantha.”

He brushes his nose against hers, and when his tongue enters her mouth, Sam finally breaks, letting her arms wrap around his neck, burying her fingers into the hair at the nape. 

When the desperate need for oxygen forces them apart, Jack leans his forehead against hers. He brushes her hair out of her face, and then looks at his hand, at her ring. Blue.

“That will do for now. Let’s go save the world.”


	12. Twelves

The sight of Jack and his ex wife at what Sam was trying to call her kitchen table brought her to a standstill. Her feet frozen, grocery bags in hand, she stood unmoving. Jack and Sara sat, murmuring quietly over what must have been some document. Jack looked so gentle, like a big bear who had tucked himself politely at the table for dinner, sheathed his claws, and was regarding the sight in front of him with utmost attention.

Sam’s stomach dropped. This was his family. Not her and the farce that they’ed been dancing around. This was the mother of his child. His wife.

Sara reaches and covered Jack’s hand with hers.

Sam immediately felt nauseous, the urge to flee rising in her, climbing into her throat until she thought she would scream. She had faced armies alone, but she couldn’t do this. Be an imposter in this house.

Jack gasped, looked up, moved immediately from the chair to take the few steps and gather Sam in his arms.

“Daniel has too many shoes. T is obsessed with alien movies. I secretly like figure skating on TV. You’re ok.”

The ring on his hand pulsed orange. The throbbing in time with the pulsing of Sam’s headache.

“Jack? What’s going on?” Sara asked, looking at Sam with sympathy and concern.

“She’s a diabetic.” Jack said, “must be having a hypo. Leave the document and I’ll sign off and mail it back to you.”

Jack spoke to Sara but only had eyes for Sam.

“Breathe, Samantha.”

“Jack, she needs food.”

“Yes, I’ll sort it out. It was lovely to see you.”

Sam suspected that if Sara was a cadet she would have flinched, but she was made of sterner stuff. She looked st Sam, reached for her face and brushed a hair.

“You should go see a doctor. You can’t expect this old bird to take care of you.”

Jack seems to ignore her, rubbing his hands up and down Sam’s arms, gently taking the bags to put them on the floor.

Mortified, Sam noticed that she was crying.

Sara rose on her toes and kissed Jack on the cheek, and then without another word, let herself out. The sound of the front door shutting was like a catalyst.

“Carter?” He was allowed to see other women, she realised. He was allowed to see his wife.

“Let me go.” Sam demanded, pushing him away. The moment his hands were no longer touching her, Sam heaved, spun slightly, and threw up. The violence of it covered the both of them.

The warm sticky liquid, the smell of vomit, the knowledge that she was an imposter, it all penetrated the air.

And despite it all, Jack pulled her fiercely into a hug.

“Sam, this isn’t you. You’re not feeling well. Come on.”

He shuffled her towards the guest bathroom, pulling of his clothes one piece at a time, the wet vomit covered jumper and the sticky undershirt, the soaked cargo pants. With shaking hands Sam worked on her clothes in the bathroom. He held her the way you would a sick child, as if she was fragile and hurting. He helped her undress and then prodded her towards the shower where the water ran warm and strong.

She expected him to leave, but he didn’t. Instead, dressed only in his boxer shorts, he pushed into the small space with her and held her to him. Her back to the shower wall, her wet naked breasts against his chest.

The water cascaded over them, the smell of vomit rose in the steam and Sam was sure she would be sick again.

Jack, calm, strong, leathered soap in his hands and then brought them to her crown. He massaged her scalp, angling the water to run down her neck and breasts, where the worst of the vomit has pooled.

His hands travelled lower, down her neck, her shoulders, and then he was running soapy hands over her breasts.

Business like, washing her as if there was nothing sexual in it, honor and duty, not arousal. It made Sam cry harder, to see his devotion and to realise she would never be a woman to him.

Jack kept sneaking glances at the chain around her neck, the metal that rested between her breasts and showed a continued pulsing oscillating between orange and red.

She could see him square his shoulders, as if he had decided to ride into battle, and then he handed her the soap.

“Have you ever washed a man, Samantha?”

He startled her, and between the edges of her headache she took a moment to look at him. He was soaked, and he was almost naked, and by God she wanted him to be hers.

Jack kicked off boxers and then she could see him, all of him. Sam swallowed and looked up.


	13. Thirteen

The first touch of her soapy hands on his skin feels like fire. The intensity of touching him like this, naked, hands soapy and wet tracing over his pecs, his shoulders, his arms is staggering. 

She hadn’t washed a person before, shower sex being very different to this slow, languid, exploration. She watched her hands, afraid to look at his eyes needing to pretend that for him this was about more than duty. Still, the intimacy of the moment was humbling.

She ran the soap down one thigh and then up the other. Between them rested his length, semi erect and sizable. Sam pressed her soapy hands against the crease of thigh and pelvis, her other hand washing him, her ministrations firm and slow. He jumped under her hands, hard and ready, and she heard Jack curse softly. He widened his stance to give her better access and Sam continued her exploration, gentler with his balls than she had been up to that point.

She looked up at him, his eyes were closed, head thrown back in ecstasy as he thrust into her hands.

“Jack. Look at me.” She needed him to know it was her. His eyes opened, heavy lidded, dark, and met hers.

Sam held him with both hands, stroking, the water cascading down their backs. She had lost the soap long ago, her focus was just Jack.

“Let me do this for you, Sir.”

“You haven’t called me that in a long time.”

“Jack, let me take care if you?”

“Anything you want, Carter.”

And so she did. She took what she wanted, touching him, until his head dropped back to hit the tile, until his rhythm turned frantic.

“Look at me.” She demanded again, and when he did, because he would follow her lead in this, always, Sam stepped forward, until his cock was sandwiched between their bodies. It took only a few more seconds and he was spilling himself over her hands and her belly.

Sam looked her fill, knowing she may never see this again. She mourned the water washing away the evidence of what they were for just moment.

Between her breasts, the token glowed a steady green.


	14. Fourteen

Sam wakes up to the sun setting and the crackle of flames in the bedroom hearth. The fireplace was the biggest surprise of Jack’s house, an indulgence she had not picked him for. He had told her, one night early into their forced cohabitation that he needed the sound rather than the warmth, that it helped him sleep. She always wondered if he shared those truths because he wanted to or because he had direct proof of the profound effect it had on her.

Jack is in the bed with her, dressed now after their shower, and the memory of that is enough to make Sam blush.

“We need to talk about this.” He says, and she wants to pretend to still be asleep, but whatever insight into her the Bond had given him, it was enough for him to know if she was conscious.

“Jack.” Sam warns, weary.

When she rolls over she can see that he is livid, and it worries her, what he is about to say. She didn’t think he was going to go about setting boundaries this way. They had crossed one, sure. (They has crossed hundreds.) But she had not expected anger.

“You don’t take care of yourself. You’re going to get hurt. It worries me.”

Ok, that had not been what she was expecting either.

“What?” Sam croaks.

“You don’t look at your token, it’s as if you hide it on purpose, and I understand why, that you don’t want to have this condition, but you’re going to run low and crash the car or something because you’re not recharging.”

“What?”

“Sam, how often do you skip meals?”

“What?”

“Samantha!”

She scrambles into a sitting position, the sheets drop and oh, she’s still naked!

Jack silently hands her one of his shirts that she had taken to sleeping in and continues, as if he had spent hours working himself up into this rant.

“You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you are not paying attention to your charge, you are actively avoiding topping yourself up, you actively avoid me, Janet is concerned, you’re desperate to be cleared for duty but you need to come to terms with the fact that you’re sick.”

“I’m not actually diabetic, Jack.”

“It doesn’t matter that there is no support group for this, it’s still happening. You matter Sam, you matter to me, and to the rest of SG-1.”

“There is no SG-1 because of me!”

“Because I made a decision, Carter! I let you and Daniel talk me into bringing yet another unknown instrument, this one is on me.”

‘Ah, so that’s why he is doing this. Not duty, but guilt.’ Sam thinks, and feels her heart break.

“That!” Jack exclaims “-whatever that was, stop it. It’s hurting you.”

“I can’t stop thinking, Jack.”

“You can stop thinking on the inside. Think out loud. Talk to me.”

“Why? So you can try to fix me?”

It’s six steps to get out of the bed and exit the bedroom, fifteen to lock herself into the office Jack built her, but to what point? She can’t keep running because she doesn’t want to hear what he has to say.

“So we can do this together.”

“Why?”

“Oh for crying out loud, Carter. Do you honestly think so little of yourself?”

And that’s it, that’s the crux, she does.

And now Jack knows as well that Jonas Hanson was right about her, that she was worthless as a woman. That she was lucky if someone would put up with her.

Jack’s ring depleted from green to blue.

He reaches for her, folding her into his arms.

“You need to trust me. And you need to maybe wear that token as a, maybe as a bracelet or a watch, so you can see it?”

A muffled sniffle and then “it’s too small, I tried adding more metal to it, but it refuses to fix and we don’t have anymore of the ore to waste.”

He didn’t know what made him say it. “A ring then? Like mine.”

“You’re right, I don’t like looking at it.”

“You were thirteen once, Sam, pretend it’s a mood ring.”

Silence. Just before Jack panics that suggesting matching rings may have been too much, a muffled “Ok.” And then “can you make that soup again for dinner?” Comes from the bundle of Sam in his arms.


	15. Fifteen

The day Jack gets called into Washington for the big Senate showdown (as he calls it) Sam finds a box on her desk. It says, in Jack’s lazy handwriting “JellyBeans” on it, and she sees that it is a repurposed shoe box. Men’s Size 11 Italian Loafers, so she assumes the shoes used to belong to Daniel. 

She pulls out the note on top.

 

Carter,

By my calculations, you have until 11am until you are down to purple. Please consume some jellybeans as required.

I should be home for dinner, we are having pizza and I think Teal’c wants to come over and watch Star Wars again, so I told him I am taking you to the dentist.

He didn’t believe me, so try to pretend you have a toothache.

Jack

 

Sam notices that there is a lot of scribbles at the end of the letter and she wonders how he wanted to sign off, but the temptation to put her hand into the jellybeans shoe box is too high to ponder on Jack’s informal letter writing style.

The first thing she finds in the bag is a Christmas ornament. There is a sticky note on it that says “This was mine when I was a baby.”

The next item is a letter, and it takes her some time to realise it must have been a letter form Jack’s mother to him when he was in the army. Her heart aches for the young man he must have been before wars took their toll on him, and for the other woman who loved him more than life itself.

The box seems to be full of intimate items, things from his life that he had packaged for her, to look after her while he was away.

She wants to read all of them at once but is astounded at the honesty and care that it must have taken. It is ridiculous to trust an addict this much.

“Oh Jack.” She whispers, stroking the box, returning the letter to it.

At 11, Sam comes back to the box, having set her alarm to remind her. True to his word, she is down to purple. The shakes start at purple, the nausea at orange. At red, she tents to pass out.

The next item she pulls out floors her. A ring box. She knows instantly it isn’t Sara’s. It seems antique, the ring inside it small and dainty, a drop of the pearl nestled in finely worked silver.

Maybe his mother’s, maybe older. It is the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. The urge to try it on overwhelms her. The ring looks beautiful on her left hand, nestled next to the thin strip of blue metal that she had worked the token into.

The klaxons go off and Sam knows she should take it off, maybe before Jack comes home.

The day rolls on, Siler has another accident, Roman in Analytics comes down with a strange alien chicken pox, one of the marines falls in love with an off-world princess.

At 1800 hours, she consumes another three jellybeans (Charlie’s baby socks, a ribbon that Sam he tied to Jack’s birthday present three years ago, and a mix tape that said 1968 on it). The mixtape takes her through the drive home and she holds onto the box while she turns on every light in the house. She’s tempted to shower but something keeps her glued to her phone instead.

At 2100 she calls the base to see if Jack had returned. It was unlike him to not call her back when he missed her calls.

At 2200 she gets into the car and drives to the base to wait for him. Janet herds her to the infirmary, and sits with her while Sam reads Jack’s Masters thesis on wild tuna fisheries. The token on her hand stays dangerously at purple. The items in the box doing just enough to offset the depletion created by her worry.

At midnight, when the shakes start, Janet gives her a sedative and hooks her up to the monitors. 

At three in the morning Sam wakes up, her ring glows orange, the little pearl of Jack’s grandmother’s ring next to it reflecting the warm light back like a dangerous beacon. She can hear Janet talking frantically on the phone.

“Colonel, I don’t see how a phone conversation will recharge her? She’s going to be critical before you are back. Ok. Ok. Yes.”

Janet pushes the phone against Sam’s ear, tucking the mobile between her head and shoulder and stepping away.

“Carter?”

“Jack?” Her voice is nothing but a whisper.

“You in bad shape?”

“I’m more worried about you. What happened?”

“I got detained and I wanted to leave and they held me in contempt.” “You said you needed to come back? I’m sorry, Sir, this just keeps going wrong.”

“No, Sam. How are your jellybeans?”

“Delicious.”

“I know we are dangerously in orange and you’re hurting, I’ll be back as soon as the next flight refuels.”

“It’s ok.”

“Carter. Let’s play a game?”

“Oh. Ok.”

“How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“What?”

“I was seventeen. Her name was Nancy.

Where was your favourite trip?”

“I went to Australia with Dad. Brisbane was gorgeous, quiet, sunny.”

“That’s the spirit, Carter.” And for the next forty minutes they shared stories. Her headache eased and she was able to sit up and hold the phone. She could hear movement on his end.

“Two more minutes Carter, and we are still on orange. Ok. How’s this. I wanted to touch you so badly last week in the shower. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. How wet I could get you and what you would taste like. The feel of your hands on me was the single most erotic thing in my life. Did you find the ring, Samantha? Do you like my grandmother’s ring? I never gave it to Sara, Gran died well after we were married, and I only found it a few months ago. It looked like it belonged to you. Ok, purple, stay in purple and sleep, I’ll be home before dawn. Love you.” And he hung up.

Sam was staring at her hands when her brain finally processed his words. Love you. The ring flashed brilliant green, and held.


	16. Sixteen

They don’t talk about the L word and they don’t have sex. Days of bed and cuddles and maintaining appropriate levels for her TypeJ diabetes (“sigh, Jack, that’s lame”) bleed into weeks.

She makes Jack sandwiches to take to work during the week she teaches at the Academy and kisses his cheek when he drops her off. Jack texts her secrets and shares the intimate things from his life. When she’s depleted beyond purple, they kiss, and then no more than eight hours of sleep are required for a recharge. She always wakes wrapped in him, hands entwined and both rings glowing green.

They argue about money, Jack refuses for her to pay rent, and Sam feels like a drain on his finances, but the Bond gives him enough insight to know that this is about her self worth and not about her trying to maintain her distance.

They open a joint bank account and Sam sits on green for two days, and then, SG3 comes back two short and the mountain is thrown into lockdown.

She’s in her lab at 3am when Jack corners her. “Carter, you can’t expect to save the world alone every week!”

“Oh, Sir, sorry, I didn’t realise you where there. Can you hand me that wrench?”

“Carter, how are you feeling?”

“What?”

“Look at your hand, Sam.”

As if the nausea was waiting for her to realize how low she had gotten, the sight of the purple makes her gag.”

“How long have you been shaking?”

“I thought it was because I skipped dinner?”

“Sam, we talked about this.”

“Jack, this is the only thing I’m good at.”

“You’re plenty good at everything else, too!”

“I need...” but she doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Jack O’Neill has her pinned against her desk.

“I didn’t come here to argue with you, Carter. You’re a diabetic, you just need a little snack.”

“What?”

But Jack’s hands are on her hips and he’s lifting her on to the lab bench. With his leg he hooks her chair and pulls it so that he can sit between her spread thighs.

“Jack?”

She had been wearing her dress blues when they were called in and it’s short work for him to push up her skirt and burry his face against her knickers.

“Oh, god.”

One finger hooks under her underwear and then he’s touching her, skin on skin, mouth working on her, urging her to spread her legs wider, lifting her calves over his shoulders so she was open to him.

“Jack. Oh, god, Jack.”

When she comes, it’s to the sight of his head between her thighs, to his fingers inside of her and his tongue working over her clit.

“Shhhh, be quiet, baby.” He whispers against her thigh, peppering kisses as he eases her legs back down.

Jack pulls her to stand so that they are chest to chest, him still on the stool, her standing between his legs. His arms wind around her and his mouth goes to her neck.

“Next time Sam, it’s ok to ask for help. You could come and just...”

“Have a snack?”

“Well, I don’t want to brag, but I could make a meal out of it, too.”

 


	17. Seventeen

‘It’s ok to ask for help, it’s ok to ask for help, it’s ok to ask for help’ Sam repeats to herself, and then looks at her ring. The metal continues to glow blue. Not fully comfortable, but without consequences that can be felt without a blood test. Janet had told her that blue is all about increased Adrenalin secretions and fight or flight responses.

At home, blue is when Jack reaches over to kiss the top of her head as he walks by, or hand her a cup of tea, or one of the thousand little daily gestures of intimacy.

Sam crosses of ‘asking for help’ from her list of ‘things Sam needs to learn’.

‘Jack loves me’ she tries. ‘Jack loves me.’ The ring is still blue. So, not that either.

She is missing two answers to this issue, ‘what lesson’ and ‘why Jack’. She thinks if she knew the lesson she would know why Jack was needed for her survival -why he was the answer to some unspoken question.

“I love him?” She whispers, but that had been true for years, that’s not it. She wonders if talking to him about this would make the process simpler or more confronting.

Janet has suggested Sam tackle this growth with a psychologist, but she isn’t talking about her feelings and her addiction to her CO to any airforce psychologist and she can’t really discuss this sort of fall out with any civilian.

She also needed to sort out what was happening with her and Jack. When she wasn’t completely shaky and depleted, she knew, logically, that his actions were well above the call of duty and the pull of guilt. She knew she was attractive, she knew he was attracted to her. She knew he thought he loved her, and that people didn’t share their lives with women out of things like honour and expectations. Except that Jack was the most honourable of men, he was a gentlemen, and maybe he did feel like he owed her. She looks at the ring, a notch down to purple now.

Ok, maybe that’s it, maybe it is t about forcing positive change, but negative change, maybe that’s how she learns what needs to be learnt. Instead of a hypothesis she needs an antithesis to work with.

“Jack doesn’t love me?” Sam whispers, the ring stays purple, but her head hurts now.

“No one loves me?” Nothing.

“No one has ever loved me?” Nothing. Not true. Her parents loved her.

“This is pathetic, I’m just being silly now. Focusing on bullshit. No use getting emotional over this girly crap I know will never have.” Orange. She’s shaking now, because she knows it’s true. If she follows this chain of thought, she will pass out.

Maybe it would be worth it, to free Jack from all her dramas, to let him be, no person wants to be chained to an obsessive scientist who doesn’t know how to love. She isn’t worth his affection, or his care. She worked too long on forcing herself to believe she didn’t want a family. Because she was not good at relationships. She wasn’t meant to have children. She had given up. She didn’t even date. She pined for a man she couldn’t have so she didn’t have to even try. That’s why the machine chose him, because she knew she couldn’t truly have him. He was a sure bet.  A fantasy. 

Her last thought, as she slid to the floor, was that she hoped Jack knew that she did love him. She saw his face, his concern, but it was too late now to tell him the truth.


	18. Eighteen

Jack feels the first shudder during a meeting with Hammond and SG9, the next, like ice water spilling done his back, propels Jack off his feet.

“Colonel!” Hammond exclaims at the break of protocol but Jack’s glance at his hand, at the purple flickering light, is enough to alert Hammond of the danger.

Jack sprints out of the meeting, nearly bowling over one of the confused looking techs milling about outside the briefing room. Hammond grabs the phone and orders for a medic to Major Carter’s lab.

Jack finds her slumped against her desk, he’s itchy and his head hurts and Sam collapses before he can catch her.

“Carter! Samantha! Sam, come back to me, Sam!”

Her pulse is weak, she’s barely breathing, as Jack pulls her into his arms.

“I adore you. Wake up. Come back.” He’s rocking her back and forth, kissing her face and her hair, when Fraiser’s team rushes in. “Colonel.” Jane warns, but Jack isn’t interested. He had lost his son and now he was losing Carter. He had failed the both of them.

If he had encouraged her to find the cure rather than enjoying playing house with her, maybe she wouldn’t be well now. Janet gives Sam an injection, and Jack has had share of field medicine to know they are about to call for a stretcher and that she would be infirmary bound for days. But Sam is twitching, eyes moving beneath shut lids, and Jack prays for the first time in half a decade.

“Please, please, baby, please.” He doesn’t care if the medics can hear, doesn’t care if Fraiser knows, he would rather die than lose Carter.

“Wake up, and we can blow this popsicle stand, go down to the cabin, I’ll take you skating, and when spring thaws the lake, I’ll teach you how to fish. I can update the wiring to the cabin, hell, I’ll steal you a naquadah reactor and we can build a lab next to the deck. Sam. Please.”

“We can get the cat you want, the stupid one with too much hair that I’m going to have to comb every day because those things are hard work. I’ll organise the cleaner we keep discussing, and she can come on Saturdays while we go to wineries on the back of your bike.”

Jack keeps talking as they rush Sam to the infirmary. He holds her hand, the one with his grandmother’s ring, and looks at it as it reflects a pulsing red light.

At the elevator, he kisses her hand.

“I should have given you the ring. I was a coward. I should have put it on your hand. Sam. Please.”

It takes hours hours for Janet to stabilise her, and Jack feels his heart breaking, again and again. He’s sat by her bedside before, but this vigil feels different. He’s touching as much of her bare skin as he can, stroking the same lazy circles he had traveled on many a Sunday morning. She should be in their bed, with the fire crackling, not hooked up to machines.

Eventually he has no secrets to share, no more pledges to make.

“I need you, Sam.”

But this isn’t a fairytale, and she doesn’t wake up.


	19. Nineteen

She knows she is dreaming, because her hair is long, and a little copper haired girl, with her blue eyes, and Jack’s cheeky grin, is tugging on her skirt. They’re on Edora, Sam recognises the fields and the river crisscrossing. The setting is unexpected, least of all the little girl running after wildflowers.

She hated Edora, the word making her nauseous well before the whole addiction mess, but she feels calm now, as if she has made peace with something. Jack is in the distance, chopping wood, powerful muscles rippling across his naked back. Sam knows he would have fit in well here, fit in with Laira, that he was happy to stay. Because all Jack wanted was family. She had judged him then, felt betrayed, she had thought they were doing something amazing as part of SG1, and his acceptance of what happened had destroyed her faith in him. Jack had told her before that he was a simple man, and she had refused to believe him, putting him on some sort of pedestal.

And yet, in her dream, he is here with her now, and he is happy. She knows it on some instinctual level. She wonders if she could be happy without a universe to explore, without the structures of modern life and goals and a career. If, without academia and work, there was anything to live for.

The sun is low in the sky, and she sits to admire it. Some of the stars are already visible, the quality of light is different here, and Sam maps them out. What would she do, she thinks, if the world was quiet. Experiments, hundreds of them, that she had wanted to run. Books she had not written or read yet. She wanted to learn how to bake, she wanted to spend more time gardening, she wanted to take up daily yoga practice.

What about holidays, where would she go? Could she have children? She wanted to get another bike. Could she sign up for the Boston marathon?

Ok, so, there are other successes to be had, there were things other than her career she aspired to. Where had she developed this idea that it was all she was good at?

Jonas? Her other number of failed relationships? The Academy? Dad? The death of her mother?

Well that was bullshit, obviously. Nothing in the universe was set in stone. All she had to do was wake up. She was going to grow out her hair, Sam decided. Maybe go brunette. She was going to blow her next pay check on those amazing new tyres for the Indian and she was going to have sex with Jack O’Neill on their back deck. All she had to do was wake up.

She didn’t have to be perfect. She could take a chance on something, and if it failed, she could try again. And really, the Bond Machine had given them a chance to have a field test for something no one ever got. She couldn’t run away from Jack, and it worked.

“Jack.” She gasped, the lights of the infirmary coming into focus.

“Sam” That was Janet, her hand stroking Sam’s face.

“Where is Jack?”

Janet pointed to a chair, where Jack was slumped, asleep, days of stubble and the bags under his eyes evidence of what had occurred.

“I made him go sit down after you stabilised. I was worried he would pass out.”

Sam looks at her hand but is not startled to realise her ring is silver. It sits next to Jack’s grandmothers ring, reflecting the pearl dome. The sight of Jack’s hands, folded on his lap, looks right. His matching ring is also nothing but the silver of plain metal.

“No more addiction?”

“Blood work is clear for secretions. Must have overloaded the system.” Janet said, but Sam knew the answer was very different. She had realised a number of things, and the answer to all her questions was Jack.

 

Jack wakes her up with gentle fingers stroking across her palms.

“Major sleepyhead.”

“Jack.”

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?”

“I’m not an addict anymore.”

“I am. I need you. Come home with me?”

“Am I dreaming?”

“Yes, I’m shacking up with Daniel instead. If he will have me.”


	20. Twenty

“So what was the lesson?” Daniel asks, handing Sam a cup of coffee.

“That Daniel is rubbish at translating.” Jack interjects, leaning over Sam and stealing her coffee.

“Excuse me!” Daniel and Sam cry out in unison. Sam reaches for her coffee while Jack dances away. She turns back and takes Daniel’s latte while he is too busy glaring at Jack.

“It’s a teaching machine. It wanted to teach me a skill, not a lesson, Daniel.”

“Oh.”

“So what did you learn?”

“How awesome I am.”

“Jack!”

“I learnt how to have a relationship with helpful teaching guides. By way of fainting. It had a fail safe mechanism.”

“Which is why you didn’t die when you had your break down.” Deduced Daniel, wonder evident in this tone.

“Try not to sound too excited.” Jack adds dryly.

“Anyway, the best way I can put it is that it gives you a scenario that forces you to act certain steps out. In this case, I think I was meant to realise that I had, somewhere along the line, forgotten to be more than one version of Sam.”

“You mean that you should have listened to me when I literately pointed out your obsession with heteronormative relationship structures?” Jack opened his mouth to respond, but thankfully, Teal’c spoke first. “MajorCarter, congratulations on upgrading your skill set.” Sam thought it was kind of Teal’c to break up what was going to turn into an episode of the Jack and Daniel show.

“I apologise for that, SG1, I have just finished briefing the President. You have a go.”

Mortified that the President knew of such private matters, Sam was never the less pleased to see the excitement on Jack’s face.

Daniel picked up his notebook and headed to the embarkation room, his three week rotation with SG2 about to begin. Command had realised that if they passed him from team to team they were all more likely to come back unscathed.

Teal’c walked out towards the training areas, a new bunch of recruits for him to “tenderise” as Jack would say.

Jack would have gone with him, in charge of personnel as he was these days, but Sam and Jack were officially on leave.

“So, where to?” He asked.

“I’m in charge?”

“I’ll follow your lead anywhere, Major Carter.”

“We’re on holiday, Jack, you can call me by my real name, privately I go by Dr O’Neill.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your kind and wonderful comments and your support for this story. There are a lot of little bits I didn’t get to tell (the short chapters are because my six month old only sleeps for minutes at a time, sometimes). I would like to (hopefully) have more of the in-between Jack/Sam moments added in after chapter 20, and I will try to make clear where in the timeline they fall.   
> If there is something you think I should write, let me know.   
> Also, I apologise for all the autocorrect caused typos. The iPad and I are learning how to be together.   
> Love, S


	21. Outtakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between Ch 19 and 20, Sam and Jack go for a drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the promised outtakes.

“Listen, Janet, I am going to bring her straight back if there are any issues, but you said it yourself, she needs a break. I need a break. Oh for crying out loud Janet, she’s a grown woman, she can make her own decisions. Fine. You talk to her.” the last words are directed at Sam as Jack thrusts the mobile phone at her and walks back into the house.

They were outside, the air was cool, and Sam had been helping Jack load the last of their bags into the truck.

“Hi Janet, I have packed all of it, I think it will be fine. Of course. You know how he gets.Say hi to Cassie. Bye.”

When she turns, Jack stands behind her, holding a thermos of coffee and a smile that Sam knows is just for her. Dawn gathers behind him, and Sam wants to sing with joy.

“Get in Carter, we have a long drive.” Jack sing songs, tossing her the keys and getting into the passenger side. He doesn’t wait for her to get in, but pulls his hat over his eyes and for all intents and purposes goes to sleep.

Slowly, Sam walks to the driver’s side. Each step laden with memory. She turns the car on and exits their driveway on autopilot. Jack loved her, but she was a little bit surprised to find that in the week since the Addiction had worn off, and the two days since she was released from the infirmary, nothing had really changed. She had expected for him to be less tactile, less affectionate, now that it was not life or death, but he wasn’t. He was just Jack, and apparently he loved like he fought, with an intensity and single mindedness that his irreverent nature belied.

It takes an hour and a half to drive the sixty miles between the house and the Littleton Clerk’s office. When she pulls over onto Prince St, Jack wakes up. He says nothing as she exists the car and walks over to the passenger side. He meets her outside, and reaches for her, pushing his hands underneath her jacket to grip her back and pull her against him. He buries his face into the side of her neck and inhales.

“Good morning, Sam.”

“Good morning, Jack.”

“Sam, Samantha, why are we at the Littleton’s Clerk’s Office?” The words brush against her skin. Jack nips gently at her ear and then pulls back, smiling.

“Are we updating your drivers licence?”

“We can, once the name change is legal?”

“Name change?” Jack croaks. Sam can see his desperation and his hurt. Jack is wearing his heart on his sleeve. He goes for light “ Are we running away, Samantha? Should I start calling you Beatrice now? Beryl?”

“Jack. I’ll be back on active duty on Monday.”

“I was going to retire.”

“My foolish man.”

The walk to the door is full of trepidation. She hasn’t asked, and she isn’t sure, and while Jack is there and holding her hand and hasn’t run for the hills, he wasn’t saying anything either.

At the counter, Sam tells them they are here for a marriage licence. Jack coughs, looks at her, and says “I thought we were registering the car.”

His grin is a mile wide as the clerk laughs and then chokes, because all he has eyes for is Sam, and Sam is giggling.

“Will you be my wife, Samantha?”

“Only if I don’t kill you before that.”

The ceremony is simple and quick. The promises between them already made, both in words and deeds, over the six months of Addiction and a week of recovery.

“Were you planning on telling me we were getting married today?” Jack asks as they walk out into the early light. Married by 8am. Sam beams up at him.

“I just wanted to skip the whole engagement thing.”

“But I haven’t updated my business cards to Mr Carter. The admin staff won’t know to update my desk and my door in solidarity.”

His words are light, but there is nothing lazy about his kisses, and the way he grips her bottom makes Sam moan and grind her pelvis into him.

“Sam, stop that, or I’m going to bend you over the car and take you right here. And I won’t stop. You’re going to spend your wedding day explaining to the Denver police force why you’re husband is a maniac.”

 


End file.
